Pages

Sunday, 31 August 2014

`Project Wing’ - Google’s Project Flight

Google has recently revealed that it has been privately working for two years to build self-flying vehicles. `Project Wing’, being their secret drone project is aimed in bringing drone delivery nearer to reality and has also uploaded a video on YouTube explaining that the team at Google X are working on a drone delivery project which has been dubbed `Project Wing’.

The two minute video shows some basic package delivery which seems like the tech giant is competing with Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery service. Google X’s Astro Teller explained to BBC that another big goal of Project Wing is for disaster relief situation and the project has also been in development during the past two years.

Google’s ambitious program announcement has escalated its technological arms race with rival Amazon.com Inc which has also been experimenting with self-flying vehicles to carry merchandise bought by customers of its online store.Its secretive research laboratory is aiming to build a fleet of drones which are designed to bypass earthbound traffic so that packages are delivered to people in the quickest possible time frame.

Latest Project Compared to `Moonshots’

However, Google would take some more years before its fleet of drone get totally operational and the company states that test flights in Australia had delivered a first aid kit, candy bars, dog treats and water to a couple of farmers after travelling a distance of around one kilometre or half a mile just two weeks ago.

Project Wing being the latest project from Google’s X laboratory has been working on self-driving cars together with other far flung innovation which Larry Page, the company’s CEO has compared to `moonshots’ that pushed the technological envelope while the lab’s other work includes Internet connected eye wear known as Google Glass, Internet beaming balloons known a s Project Loon and high tech contact lens which monitors glucose levels in diabetics patients.

According to Google it states that they are aiming to improve society with the X lab’s research though the Glass device has been targeted to criticism by some, while investors seems apprehensive, expressing frustration on the funds that Google has put into the X lab without any guarantee of its success.

New Approach to Moving Goods

Drone could probably help Google in the expansion of their existing service which delivers goods purchased online on the day that they are ordered with Google offering the same day delivery service by automobiles in parts of San Francisco Bay Area, New York and Los Angeles.

According to Google’s statement in a pamphlet describing Project Wing, it states that `the self-flying vehicles could also open up a new approach to moving goods which could include options that are cheaper, less wasteful, faster and environmental friendly than what is presently prevailing’. Besides this, Google also seems to see its drone as a another step in e-commerce delivery where the aerial vehicle could make it possible and easier for people to obtain certain items like power drill, which may be needed periodically as well as emergency supplies to areas that could have been affected by earthquakes, hurricane or other natural calamities.

According to Google, a team led by Nick Roy, aeronautics professor of Massachusetts Institute of Technology had been working on Project Wing for two years though the Mountain View Californian company refrained from disclosing much about the cost of the project.